Summer movie season feels like it starts earlier and earlier. Cuba’s open for business — now, can the country’s massive Biennale become a global center for art? With all the talk of greater diversity on TV, can you name any Asian-American stars? And, as the latest sequel is set to pass $1 billion overseas, the "Fast and Furious" franchise heads to number 8.
'Furious 8' speeds into theaters in 2017 (probably with lines just like that)
To the surprise of absolutely no one, "Furious 8" is heading to theaters — or "Fast 8," or "2 Eight 2 Furious," or whatever they decide to call it. The most recent installment in Universal’s muscle car movie series, "Furious 7," is about to pass $1 billion in foreign box office. Only two other movies have ever done that, both directed by James Cameron: "Avatar" and "Titanic."
At the just-concluded CinemaCon convention for movie theater owners in Las Vegas, "Fast and Furious" star Vin Diesel revealed the next movie’s release date: April 14, 2017. Save the date!
The scripts for these movies might not be smart, but they give you ridiculous stunts accompanied by equally ridiculous one-liners. Here are some of the cast's favorite one-liners and some of our own.
Furious 7 stars' favorite one-liners
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson one-liners
Asian-American YouTube celebrities aim to change perceptions, break into Hollywood
A recent study on diversity by GLAAD found that, of all the main characters in the 2013-2014 broadcast TV season, only 4 percent were Asian. That percentage is actually lower than the previous year, when Asian actors comprised 6 percent of main character roles.
And while that report was published before the debut of "Fresh Off the Boat" — the first TV show to center on an Asian-American family in over 20 years — it's safe to say that Asians are overlooked in television. There is, however, one outlet where the community is thriving.
But let's back up a little bit. Phil Yu is the creator of the popular news and culture blog Angry Asian Man, which he started in 2001 to voice his opinions about the lack of Asians in film and TV. As he puts it, "When I was a kid, honestly, I didn't see anyone that looked like me."
Things have changed since 2001, but not entirely for the best. Yu argues that, while the opportunities for Asian-American actors have increased slightly, "When you look at the way Asians are portrayed, it's largely really terrible or just invisible. And in this culture, not being there almost means that you just don't count, that you really don't matter."
Although mainstream media still has a long way to go, Yu says that there's one outlet where the community is finding its voice: YouTube. "If you look at what the kids are watching, it's YouTube," he says. "We've seen the rise of the Asian-American YouTube star."
Nora Lum, aka Awkwafina, released "My Vag" in October 2012, and the song went viral within a couple weeks. While growing up, she remembers the only comedian she emulated was Margaret Cho. "She was literally the only one," she says.
"She has a bit where she's talking about when she was growing up and she was saying, 'When I grow up, I want to be a prostitute on 'MASH.' Those were the only plausible parts she could play if she went into the entertainment industry."
But Lum, who has million of hits on YouTube, actually attributes much of her success to her ethnicity: "I think that's why I was able to do well in the beginning, because it was such a foreign thing. People frame it in a negative way, like, 'For Asian-Americans there's no one out there, so that must be really bad for you.' No, I benefited from it."
Eugene Lee Yang is another popular Asian personality on the Internet, though you might know him as BuzzFeed Asian Guy. He was originally a video producer behind the camera, but when BuzzFeed wanted to diversify the people in their videos, Yang demanded that they use the only Asian-American on their production staff — him. And then he became internet famous.
If Asians said the stuff white people say
He describes his big break as, "Simply a series of scenes of myself and the comedian Jenny Yang speaking to white people with the language turned around on them." But the effects of the hit video, which has more than 8.5 million views, weren't so simple for Yang, who found himself under vastly increased scrutiny.
"That was the first time I was really, heavily seen and circulated in terms of the viral share, and my reaction at first was a bit bashful," he confesses. "It's weird having people talk immediately [about you], like, Five seconds ago someone just posted their thoughts about how you look, which is usually the first thing people notice."
"But all of those comments are important," Yang notes. "Just by someone saying, 'Oh, this Asian guy's blank,' they're recognizing that it's an Asian guy they're watching and commenting on and responding to. That alone served as a turning point for me to say, 'It's really important for me to be on camera.'"
Yang saw this as the perfect way to represent a community that has largely been ignored in other outlets. He says that, "People would be surprised at how much impact we have, especially as a community, online. There was a joke that Asian-Americans are just more tech-savvy in general, so we're all online and we're all very vocal, but it's one of the places that we can really vent our frustrations with the way that we're portrayed."
But even as he was connecting with millions of people online, others still resorted to the same old stereotypes. Yang points to a recent BuzzFeed post on Facebook, "Where we asked the audience to give questions for a segment called 'Ask an Asian.' The top comments with the most likes were all flagrant, racist questions that were the most inane, basic things you could ask. Like, 'Why do you eat dogs?'"
So how do you combat these stereotypes? Yang argues that it's really simple: more representation in film. "That is still where a lot of the power lies, in my opinion," he says. Of course, it can never just be that simple.
"My big problem with the fact that Asians are not represented well enough in movies and in TV," he says, "is that there's someone still controlling the idea that we are not worth a ticket, or we're not worth seeing because you have to pay to see [us]."
Wong Fu Productions might just be the ones to make that leap from the Internet to Hollywood. They have over 2 million subscribers on YouTube, but its not your standard viral fare. Rather than dank memes or adorable cats, their videos are more like indie shorts, which feature primarily Asian casts.
Wesley Chan of Wong Fu Productions says that was the plan from the outset: "That's where we've always stood with Wong Fu Productions — using Asian faces to tell an everyday story. The point is to show that it exists."
The success of their videos lead to some notable "real world" results — they got to meet President Obama a few years back — and it's also positioned them as representatives of the Asian-American community, which wasn't part of the plan at the beginning. But now that they're here, Chan recognizes it's a chance, "to represent, and instead of continuing to say, 'No no no, that's not us,' we'd better just own up to it and start making some moves with it."
Wong Fu movie teaser for Everything Before Us
And it seems like those moves will finally involve jumping from YouTube to the big screen. Wong Fu crowdfunded their first feature film and raised almost double the $200,000 goal, and with that money they made the indie-romance "Everything Before Us," which screened at the Los Angeles Pacific Asian Film Festival.
Philip Wang, a co-founder of Wong Fu, hopes their achievement proves to Hollywood studios that Asian-Americans are worth something. As he says, "We were able to show them that we're not just some kids with a video camera, but we're storytellers, we're filmmakers, and we want to make a difference."
Havana Biennial Art Exhibition: The story of more than 30 years of art reaching out from Cuba
The Havana Biennial Art Exhibition, which started in 1984, takes place every two years. It shows off the art of what's seen as a politically repressive society, where there's a fine line to walk when it comes to making a statement.
Stuart Ashman, head of Long Beach's Museum of Latin American Art, has been attending the Havana Biennial since 1997. His parents were Cuban immigrants, taking him to the United States two years after Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution.
Ashman says that Cuba continues to change and evolve — in the '60s and '70s, "all of the art that was coming out of Cuba had either something to do with the Revolution or had to be in support of what was going on there," Ashman says.
"In 1980, a group of artists got together. These were artists that were well-known in Cuba, and they had been doing abstract art and photography, and things like that that had nothing to do with those themes, and they created an exhibit called 'Volumen Uno,' 'Volume One.' And it was in an alternative space, and the interest was so big that the Ministry of Culture came in and said 'OK, you guys are doing something that everybody cares about, so what should we do?' And that's when they instituted the Havana Biennial," Ashman says.
The Biennial started a few years after "Volumen Uno." It's known as the biennial of the developing world, but it also includes the United States, England, France, Portugal, Brazil and more. Despite the issues around freedom of expression in Cuba, Ashman says that most artists feel they can say whatever they want. One example: Esterio Segura.
"He did a series on Pinocchio. And Pinocchio, as you know, the more he lies, the longer his nose gets. And so Pinocchio is standing on a stack of books, and his nose is actually a rope, and the rope has gotten so long that it's tied him up, and the books that he's standing on are the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, USSR, etcetera. And so here's something he's saying that is criticizing that philosophy, in a sense, and it's perfectly fine and totally acceptable. Now, what is not acceptable may be a depiction of Fidel doing something weird, or in an unflattering way," Ashman says.
One artist who has faced opposition from the Cuban government is Tania Bruguera, whose work promotes democracy. She's had her passport seized and has been detained.
"She's the sand in the oyster. That's her work. I think the Cuban position is that she really wasn't doing a performance piece, that she was actually fomenting some kind of dissent. And it was really an unfortunate moment for her to be doing that, because it was when the negotiations were starting. And it was delicate. You didn't really want something that was going to further upset the opponents of opening on both sides. So, I wouldn't necessarily characterize her piece as an artistic expression that was squelched. I would actually say that what was squelched was her attempt at a political demonstration," Ashman says.
Ashman says that, with relations warming between the U.S. and Cuba, it's become relatively easy to stage shows with Cuban artists.
"The U.S. Immigration Service has been giving artists who have proven themselves five-year multiple-entry visas. What makes it difficult is the transportation, because there's not enough big airplanes. I did a show in New Mexico when I was there, and we shipped the stuff from Cuba, to Paris; from Paris, to Mexico City; and then by truck from Mexico City to Albuquerque," Ashman says. "And occasionally you get a U.S. Customs officer that you have to recite the rules to, that art is exempt from the embargo."
The normalizing of relations with Cuba has been long awaited.
"To be honest, I didn't think it was going to happen in my lifetime. So, I think it's going to change everything in a very positive way for both sides. I mean, the impact of Cuba on the United States maybe is less than the impact of the United States in Cuba, certainly economically. Culturally, I think, it might be equal, because there's a lot of stuff that we think of as Latino that comes really from Cuba — music, food, dance," Ashman says.
Ashman says that Cubans love Americans.
"If you ask a Cuban, 'who are you most like,' they say 'USA man, USA.' That's who they want to be. And that doesn't mean McDonald's on every corner. I think there's going to be some adjustment that they're going to have to make, but they're eager," Ashman says.
When it comes to what Ashman is looking forward to at this year's Biennial, he cited Juanito Delgado, who does a project called "Detrás del Muro."
"What he does is he commandeers the Malecón, the sea wall, and he does installations there. And some of them have a real political viewpoint. On the sea wall, he'll put up a chain link fence, and enough links were removed to make it look like a 747. So you're looking through an airplane to the ocean, and what's to the north is Miami. However, there was another guy who did a virtual installation of a runway on the water, and that wasn't allowed," Ashman says.
Ashman added that the people making these decisions aren't necessarily that well-informed about the art.
"The other is an artist who does mirror images of words, and in Spanish, the word 'exito' is 'success,' so he put the word 'exit, exito.' So he implied that leaving was a success. That wasn't allowed. It's in the [Biennial] catalog, it's published in the book, and nobody took him to jail, but he couldn't do it as a public piece," Ashman says.
The 12th Havana Biennial takes place May 22 through June 22. The theme: "Between the Idea and Experience."
Summer movie season 2015: 'Age of Ultron' smashing into theaters alongside 'Pitch Perfect 2'
The summer movie season is upon us with highly-anticipated films like "Avengers: Age of Ultron," which unofficially kicks off the season on May 1 (though "Ultron" has already opened overseas).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAUoeqvedMo
"This summer, there's something for everyone, and we couldn't say that last year," says Kyle Buchanan, senior editor at Vulture. This year, there are films aimed at women and children — "Pitch Perfect 2," "Inside Out" and "Trainwreck" on that list.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MxnhBPoIx4
"[They're] movies people expect to be some of the biggest grossers of the summer," Buchanan says. Other films to look out for are "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" and "Dope," which premiered at Sundance.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L41xwM8tIRQ
And, of course, there are the ones that might flop at the box office, with wobbly word on the street. "Terminator Genisys," "Fantastic Four" and "Ant-Man" didn't look good to Buchanan, with those first two reboots looking particularly questionable.